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Demonstrators in Iran on December 30, 2017. Picture by SalamPix/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved.On
the 1st
of January, and
the fifth day of protests in Iran, President Rouhani decided to
pursue a course that the security and military officials had pursued
before him. While speaking of the importance of attention to economic
and political realities and the people’s right to protest, Rouhani
overlooked the true reality of the situation when he proclaimed:
“There is a minority, a tiny group, who would come in and do
something: to chant slogans against the law and the will of the
people, to insult the sanctities and values of the revolution, and to
destroy public property. Our country will round them up good.”

There
is no doubt that government – any government - is in the business
of “rounding up.” It is
in
the essential working of government to round up collective wealth, to
gather subjects, and to stockpile power. At times, such an
act
takes on a harsher form. Banks and prisons, two important
institutions in the modern Iranian order, are crystallizations of the
ultimate form of this gathering up. These two entities may help us
understand what took
place in Iran in the last few months.

Iranian
neoliberalism

Since the moment privatization and the
economy of an “eastern” neoliberalism was rolled out in Iran
during the administration of Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997)
through its ripening in the Rouhani years, they have, beside their
other results, created a class of poor and destitute people
who have viewed their own meager prospects as being bound to the very
government which in fact saps their lifeblood. Owing
to their dependence on government aid, these
people have always been the greatest
supporters of those in power. Because of economic challenges posed by
various administrations' adjustment policies
and international sanctions, this burgeoning class has widened to
include the classical middle class and is now at the end of its rope,
in just the fashion Fyodor Dostoevsky describes in his Notes
from the Underground. It should
come as no surprise that this class tends to see itself as opposed to
all the factions of Iran’s two-party system (conservatives and
reformists). In fact, it is the very thing the system in power has
not been able to accomplish – unifying the government – that
masses of protesters are doing now. This time around, protesters
chant against all factions and cliques: reformists, conservatives,
middle classes, and the whole governing class have been called into
question.

All
movements and struggles require strategic mistakes on the part of the
ruling class.

If
this broad class was previously less inclined to join political,
social, and labor movements given its vital dependence on various
administrations, it is now, in the course of this unexpected event,
in the process of slipping out from Big Brother’s lap. More
specifically, the possibility has been opened up by political
scuffles within the ruling bloc. Conservative tendencies and those
opposed to Rouhani who dreamed of using this class’ grievances to
their own ends, thought they could tilt the electoral field in their
favor for the coming decisive presidential election by firing up the
cauldron of economic woes as Ahmadinejad had. Now the cauldron’s
lid has flown off, and political figures on all sides find their
faces scorched. We know that all movements and struggles require
strategic mistakes on the part of the ruling class.

This boiling cauldron is the outcome of the
policies which govern the Iranian economy. This situation is not
limited to Iran but
rather a
global condition. Capitalism has fallen into a crisis of
neoliberalism and its political consequences. The
Rouhani administration is no longer
keen to join global labor markets, for such a move would bring
repercussions that they would prefer
avoiding. Even the reactionary
demands some protesters have voiced in recent days (e.g. slogans
calling for a return of the dictatorships of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
and his father) are in fact the Iranian form of a longing to return
to the past, a sentiment brought about by discontent with the present
situation, whose expressions we see elsewhere also as in Brexit and
Trump. Everyone wants to return to a time and place they’ve lost,
captive to a certain nostalgia of living standards.

What
is moderation?

The
moment he threw his hat into the ring for the presidency, Rouhani
presented himself as heir to the legacy of Hashemi Rafsanjani and
christened himself a moderate with neoliberal economic policies. In
such a situation of moderation, nothing in fact remains moderate: in
order to construct a moderate position, things must be done away
with, voices silenced, and terms changed in advance. In an age that
proclaims itself moderate, moderation in fact always goes to
shambles. A number of Rouhani’s policies are carried out in the
name of moderation and adjustment: changes in labor law, bank loan
conditions, and housing programs; the employment plan; the
introduction of tuition at universities and remaking of curricula.
But they are in fact brimming with radicalism, a plot to conserve and
entrench class divides. A controlled parliamentary democracy on the
neoliberal model is the preferred political mode of the age, and the
instrument of its advancement is a weakening of the role of the human
sciences and a removal of all intellectuals save for
free-market
economists from the circle of major decision-making.

In
an age that proclaims itself moderate, moderation in fact always goes
to shambles

What
has been said is a summary of Iran’s experience, one that has
intensified in these recent years of the Rouhani administration.
Given such conditions, what we see unfolding in the streets of Iran’s
smaller, poorer cities should come as no surprise. We read in Hobbes
that if people are sufficiently scared, they may do anything. A kind
of fear that works more strongly than anything else: a collective
fear which manifests itself in situations of collapse. Poverty,
corruption, earthquakes, polluted environment, and other calamities
are stoking the fears of Iranian society. The recent
events
are not at all unexpected, in fact. Iran’s deprived classes have
spoken of their fears long ago: in small street protests, in their
demonstrations and occupations before the parliament, factories, and
even their own slum dwellings. It is enough to skim
through the social affairs pages of Iranian newspapers from the past
few years to understand that the government, and country more
generally, have been deaf.

Agitators

Various political and social movements in
Iran have, as in other countries, been labeled "subversive
protestors (or agitators)”
intent on undermining public security through the destruction of
public property and other disturbances. We should recall that the
principal agitation and disturbance is in fact to be found at the
level of our collective life. The true agitators are the mechanisms
and actors who have, through their conduct and policies, thrown our
common collective life into chaos, leaving it staggered and knocked
over: the powerful, leaders of the major economic and cultural
monopolies, and all who have helped implement the economic program of
social immiseration.

If violence should break out during the
protests, it is but a part of this totality, an expression of the
everyday situation. This is why the imprisonment and arrest of people
and their means of communication on the pretext of national security
is, despite its populist gloss, in fact a strategy which is against
the people and the reality of things - and thus unacceptable. The
protests are the outcome of our circumstance and nothing else, e.g.,
the meddling of a foreign enemy. The efforts of both wings of Iranian
politics to justify their ignorance and fear of protestors with
charges of “agitation” and working for a foreign power, will
disillusion their last hope. “Reform” means being answerable to
the current situation – not denying it.

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